22 JEROME CARDAN. 



fessions by torture from presumed witches. All that such 

 people assert about themselves he declared to be nothing 

 but fantastical invention. He set himself also against 

 astrology, and declared later in life, when his opinion was 

 heard with respect by every prince in Europe, that men 

 practising astrology should be severely punished. Cardan 

 took his opinion on that head very good-humouredly, and 

 retaliated upon his friend by calculating his nativity, and 

 printing it in a small book of horoscopes, cheerfully point- 

 ing out at the same time the liberty he took. 



From Pavia the law professor was induced by the offer 

 of high pay to remove to Avignon. A proposed reduction 

 of his salary caused him to leave Avignon when he was 

 twenty-nine years old, and go to Milan, where he practised 

 and acquired great fame and profit. He was placed in 

 charge of the provisioning of the town during the follow- 

 ing years of distress and famine. From Milan, Alciat was 

 called to Bourges, where Francis I. gave him a salary of 

 twelve hundred ducats, and honoured his lectures some- 

 times even by personal attendance. The dauphin, before 

 one lecture, made him a present of four hundred ducats. 

 Students came from foreign lands to hear his brilliant 

 and profound expositions of the laws, and his renown in- 

 creased so much that he was to a certain extent contended 

 for by rival princes. A man profoundly versed in law, 

 and an acute counsellor whose wit was marketable 

 for he loved money as much as fame, and both inordi- 



